First International Child and Family Conference: Call for Papers
Location: University of Bristol, UK
Dates: 17-19 June 2025
Overview
The last few decades have witnessed enormous social, political, cultural, economic, and environmental transformations at local, national, and global levels.
These changes have encompassed all spheres, including that of the family. It is this intersection between recent societal transformations and family life, especially as they relate to childhoods and children’s lives that the inaugural International Child and Family Conference, hosted by the University of Bristol (UK), seeks to explore.
In particular, it aims to illuminate the various ways in which these broad shifts that have occurred at national or global levels have had an impact on childhoods and children’s everyday lives within the context of families and communities in locales in both the Global North and the Global South as well at the level of international law and global social policy.
Please note: Registration will open soon; details to follow.
Conference themes
To explore these global shifts and transformations and their impact on childhoods and children’s lives within the sphere of families and communities from different disciplinary perspectives we welcome paper, panel and poster submissions that relate to the following themes. This is not an exhaustive list of possible themes for exploration, and we welcome participants’ own proposals:
- Constructions of childhood and family life
- Explorations of children’s everyday lives within families and communities
- Children’s rights and child protection
- Children’s agency and children’s participation
- Children’s experiences and perceptions of different forms of violence within families and communities
- Intersections between education and family life
- Disability and childhood/family life
- Health interventions/policies/inequalities as they relate to children’s lives/family life
- Socio-economic inequalities and childhoods/family life
- Digital technology and childhoods/family life
- Childhood sexual identity and orientation
- Sex Education/Sexual Reproductive Health
- Climate/environmental crises and children/families
- Intergenerational relations within the context of families/communities
- Child and family migration
- Theories and practices of parenting, socialization, and childrearing
- Gender inequality, gender socialization
- Caring and being cared for, including the role of children and young people in practices of care
- Children in care or children/young people leaving care
- Criminal exploitation/trafficking and its impact on children and families
- Global laws, policies, discourses and other interventions relating to childhood and children within the context of the family and community
- State, community and civil society interventions, programmes, or professional practice which supports families on issues of child care, children’s rights, and child protection
- Innovative methodological approaches in understanding childhoods, children’s lives, families and family practices
- The ethics of researching childhoods and children’s lives within the context of their families and communities
Proposals for symposia, workshops and roundtables
In addition to paper, poster, and panel submissions, we also welcome suggestions for small symposia, workshops around creative methods with children or roundtables focusing on questions that are critical for childhood and family-focused researchers to consider at a time of ongoing enormous social, cultural, economic, environmental and political transformations.
If you wish to organise a symposium or roundtable, please email Dr. Afua Twum-Danso Imoh: afua.twum-danso@bristol.ac.uk.
Plenary speakers
- Professor Esther Dermott (Professor of Sociology and Social Policy & Faculty Pro Vice-Chancellor, the University of Bristol, UK)
- Professor Tatek Abebe (Professor of Childhood Studies, the Norwegian University of Sciences and Technology – NTNU – Norway)
- Ms. Ellen Broome (Managing Director of CoramBAAF and Coram Family & Childcare, UK)
